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For the past 20 years, abortion rates in the United States and in Pennsylvania have been trending down.

In Luzerne County, the rate has moved in the opposite direction.

Data from the state Department of Health shows a general increase in the abortion rate for county residents between 1991 and 2011 and a general decrease in the rate for state residents.

The abortion rate measures the number of procedures performed per 1,000 female residents between the ages of 15 and 44. The state can only measure procedures that happen within Pennsylvania. If a woman goes outside the state for an abortion, that is not counted in state data, but if a Luzerne County woman goes elsewhere in Pennsylvania, that procedure is marked as an abortion for a Luzerne County resident.

The Department of Health collects data through a form that must be submitted for every abortion, said Holli Senior, a department spokeswoman.

Senior noted that the Luzerne County rate has been below the state's average rate during the past 20 years. In 2011, the latest year for which data is available, the county rate was 9.2 and the state rate was 14.2. The county trend line also rises slower than the state's trend line drops in that time period, but the rate is above the median by counties.

Luzerne County rate

Department of Health statisticians said they can't speculate on what has caused the numbers for the state or county to behave like they have.

Penn State women's studies professor Jill Wood said she had not studied Luzerne County abortion rates, but she said certain environmental factors have a strong relationship with abortion rates.

Access to reproductive health care and sexual education are big predictors of the rates for unplanned pregnancies and abortions, Wood said. Women must also be able to reach a pharmacy to use brith control. Good public transportation and pharmacies willing to prescribe emergency contraceptive pills can contribute to a lower abortion rate, she said.

The national trend

A report published this month from The Guttmacher Institute, a think tank with research that includes abortion and reproductive health in the United States, said the nationwide abortion rate is at its lowest level since 1973. The institute found a decrease almost every year since 1991 for the nationwide abortion rate.

The report's authors did not investigate what led to the decrease, but they noted that the time they studied predated new abortion laws that began in 2011. The decrease coincided with a decrease in the overall pregnancy and birth rates and increased use of contraceptives, said author Rachel Jones in the report.

Wood believes the lower national rate could come from laws making emergency contraceptives more easily available. In 2006, the pills, sometimes called "morning-after pills," became available to women 18 or older without a prescription. A brand called Plan B is now available to anyone over the counter.

The population who uses emergency contraception is the same group that would more typically have abortions, Wood said.

"Most women having abortions are women who did not want to be pregnant in the first place," she said. "My hypothesis is that if women are not getting pregnant because they have access to ECP, that could explain the decrease in abortion rates."

Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Selina Winchester said her organization has not been asked to conduct sex education programs in Luzerne County in at least six years.

"We know that education helps to delay the decision to become sexually active among teens, and better prepares them to handle the responsibility when ready," she said.

Planned Parenthood runs a clinic in Wilkes-Barre. The clinic distributes birth control and pregnancy testing, among other services, but does not offer abortions. Women in Luzerne County and other Northeastern Pennsylvania counties must travel to Allentown, Harrisburg or elsewhere for the procedure, Winchester said.

The numbers are the same for Lackawanna and Wyoming counties. No abortions were performed there in 2011 and as far back as 1991, the earliest year a reporter checked for data.

That is not uncommon. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 87 percent of counties had no clinic, and just under half of Pennsylvania women lived in those counties.

Pro-life perspective

A pro-life organization also offers its services to women in Luzerne County with unplanned pregnancies. The Wyoming Valley chapter of Pennsylvanians for Human Life tries to encourage women to carry through their pregnancies, President Betty Caffrey said.

"Our goal is for every human life to be protected by law," she said.

Caffrey said she did not know why the county rate had trended upward during the past twenty years.

"There's never a day we don't have someone come in," she said. "We're doing all that we can without help of the government. We rely totally on donations. We've been able to survive. Hopefully we are there as long as a need is there."

bwellock@citizensvoice.com

570-821-2051, @CVBillW

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